World Heritage: France

Issued on: 17 June 2006 Issue type: Commemorative Denomination: US$ 0.84 (sheet of 20 stamps) Printer: The stamps were printed in offset by Cartor Security Printing (France). Quantity: 180,000 stamps ( 9,000 sheets) Designer: The photographs were adapted as stamps by Robert Stein (United Nations).

Format: 50 mm horizontally by 35 mm vertically, perforation to perforation. Perforation: 13

Description:

The Pont du Gard was built shortly before the Christian era to allow the aqueduct of Nîmes (which is almost 50 km long) to cross the Gard river. The Roman architects and hydraulic engineers who designed this bridge, which stands almost 50 m high and is on three levels – the longest measuring 275 m – created a technical as well as an artistic masterpiece.

Issued on: 17 June 2006  Issue type: Commemorative Denomination: € 0,55 (sheet of 20 stamps) Printer: The stamps were printed in offset by Cartor Security Printing (France). Quantity: 220,000 stamps (11,000 sheets) Designer: The photographs were adapted as stamps by Robert Stein (United Nations).

Specification:
Format: 50 mm horizontally by 35 mm vertically, perforation to perforation. Perforation: 13

Description:

Since the pre-Roman period a fortified settlement has existed on the hill where Carcassonne now stands. In its present form, it is an outstanding example of a medieval fortified town, with massive defences encircling the castle, its associated houses, streets and the fine Gothic cathedral. Carcassonne is also of exceptional importance because of the long campaign of restoration carried out by Viollet-le-Duc, one of the founders of the modern science of conservation.

Issued on: 17 June 2006 Issue type: Commemorative Denomination: € 0,75 (sheet of 20 stamps) Printer: The stamps were printed in offset by Cartor Security Printing (France). Quantity: 220,000 stamps (11,000 sheets) Designer: The photographs were adapted as stamps by Robert Stein (United Nations). 

Format: 50 mm horizontally by 35 mm vertically, perforation to perforation. Perforation: 13

Description:

The Loire Valley is an outstanding cultural landscape of great beauty, containing historic towns and villages, great architectural monuments (the châteaux), and cultivated lands formed by many centuries of interaction between their population and the physical environment, primarily the River Loire itself.

The Loire Valley is noteworthy for the quality of its architectural heritage, in its historic towns such as Blois, Chinon, Orléans, Saumur, and Tours, but in particular in its world-famous castles, such as the Château de Chambord, which is featured as the stamp design.

The landscape of the Loire Valley, and more particularly its many cultural monuments, illustrate to an exceptional degree the ideals of the Renaissance and the Age of the Enlightenment on western European thought and design.

I am showing the verso of the Chambord stamp to illustrate the magnificent and beautiful embossing of the stamp.  Even with merely an image of the verso, one can see the embossed representation of the Eiffel Tower rather clearly.  What beautiful stamps the United Nations series are!

Issued on: 17 June 2006 Issue type: Commemorative Denomination: CHF 1,00 (sheet of 20 stamps) Printer: The stamps were printed in offset by Cartor Security Printing (France). Quantity: 280,000 stamps (14,000 sheets) Designer: The photographs were adapted as stamps by Robert Stein (United Nations). 

Specification:
Format: 50 mm horizontally by 35 mm vertically, perforation to perforation. Perforation: 13

Format: 50 mm horizontally by 35 mm vertically, perforation to perforation. Perforation: 13

Description:

The fortified medieval town of Provins is situated in the former territory of the powerful Counts of Champagne. At the beginning of the second millennium, Provins was one of several towns in the territory of the Counts of Champagne that became the venues for great annual trading fairs linking northern Europe with the Mediterranean world. Provins preserves to a high degree the architecture and urban layout that characterize these great medieval fair towns.

Pictured on the stamp is Caesar’s Tower (Tour César), which was intended as a place of refuge should the town be captured. It was also used as a watchtower and a prison.

Issued on: 17 June 2006 Issue type: Commemorative Denomination: CHF 1,30 (sheet of 20 stamps) Printer: The stamps were printed in offset by Cartor Security Printing (France). Quantity: 280,000 stamps (14,000 sheets) Designer: The photographs were adapted as stamps by Robert Stein (United Nations).

Format: 50 mm horizontally by 35 mm vertically, perforation to perforation. Perforation: 13

Description:

Perched on a rocky islet in the midst of vast sandbanks exposed to powerful tides between Normandy and Brittany, stand the ‘Wonder of the West’, a Gothicstyle Benedictine abbey dedicated to the archangel St Michael, and the village that grew up in the shadow of its great walls. Built between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, the abbey is a technical and artistic tour de force, having had to adapt to the problems posed by this unique natural site.

World Heritage - France — US$ 0.39

Issued on: 17 June 2006 Issue type: Commemorative Denomination: US$ 0.39 (sheet of 20 stamps) Printer: The stamps were printed in offset by Cartor Security Printing (France).  Quantity: 260,000 stamps (13,000 sheets) Designer: The photographs were adapted as stamps by Robert Stein (United Nations). 

Format: 50 mm horizontally by 35 mm vertically, perforation to perforation. Perforation: 13

The stamp design features the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the River Seine.